Follwing up on yesterday’s post, here’s another block from Robert Gagnon’s book The Bible and Homosexual Practice. Lots of mature reflection on what Jesus was doing as he was hanging out with “tax collectors and sinners” here, and a good dose of application for all of us:
The stories about Jesus’ encounters with women who were considered sexual sinners [as in John 8] do not support the conclusion that Jesus was soft on sexual sin. He did allow these women to come into close contact with him. He did not fear the stigma attached to associating with such people. He advocated mercy as a means of stimulating repentance and devotion to God rather than support the death penalty. He understood that those who were forgiven the most would stand a good chance of loving the Forgiver the most. Such people made excellent candidates for receiving Jesus’ message about the coming kingdom and for obeying his teaching. Jesus forgave sexual sins, like all other sins, in the expectation of transformed behavior. They were to go and sin no more.
Further, Jesus’ treatment of sexual sinners was not any different from his treatment of other types of sinners. This becomes clear in the case of a second group of texts: those having to do with tax collectors. The story about the wealthy tax collector named Zacchaeus is the most revealing text as regards how Jesus interacted with tax collectors (Luke 19:1-10). Where the women cited above were marginalized by their sexual misconduct, Zacchaeus was marginalized perhaps because of his collaboration with an oppressive foreign power, but certainly because of the well-founded suspicion that he himself was profiting through extortion. He is a much less sympathetic character than the aforementioned women. Although it is common today to view Jesus as primarily concerned with helping the poor, the offensiveness of Jesus’ fraternization with tax collectors is often missed. Few today who would argue that sexual purity was a low-priority issue for Jesus based on Jesus’ free association with sexual sinners, would also argue that Jesus was soft on issues of economic exploitation based on his free association with economic sinners.
The parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector (“publican”) also loses its offensive and scandalous quality whenever the connection between tax collectors and economic exploitation of the poor is lost (Luke 18:9-14). At the end of the parable the tax collector goes home “justified” in God’s eyes, while the Pharisee does not. A typical reaction might be: “Good! The Pharisee is a pompous and judgmental religious prude. It is about time that he gets his comeuppance.” Such a reaction, however, would overlook the fact that, as bad as the Pharisee might seem in modern cultural context (not his own), at least he was not exploiting the poor for his own personal economic gain. When Jesus extols the virtue of the tax collector’s humility (“all who humble themselves will be exalted,” 18:14), he is obviously not condoning or excusing the severity of the tax collector’s offensive behavior. Presumably, the tax collector does not resume his old practice of defrauding the poor after beating his chest in the temple and pleading with God to “be merciful to me, a sinner” (18:13). His penitent spirit is a sign of true repentance. Conversely, the problem with the Pharisee is not his righteous conduct, but rather his self-righteous attitude. Jesus is lifting up the one of the two who has the best chance of leaving the temple with a heart open to God’s demands for human compassion.
It is not surprising that when Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’s home, “all who saw it began to grumble…, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner’” (19:7). What is crucial for our purposes is that Jesus’ fraternization with Zacchaeus clearly does not convey Jesus’ acceptance of Zacchaeus’s behavior. Jesus exclaimed that “Today salvation has come to this house” only after Zacchaeus had announced his intention to give half of his possessions to the poor and to pay back four times as much of whatever he had defrauded others (19:8-9; cf. 3:12-13).
The concluding words to the story about Zacchaeus, “the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (19:10), apply equally well to the stories about women sinners. We can apply these same words to our ministries to homosexual persons.
In the true spirit of Jesus, to seek and to save practicing homosexuals does not mean confirming their homosexual fantasies or conduct.
It means actively seeking out and sharing a meal with them, taking the message of the kingdom to them, and demonstrating through our own interest in them that God values them.
It also means remembering our differences from Jesus, knowing that we too are sinners, numbered among those whom Jesus has sought out, recipients of his forgiveness.
This is the difficult work of reconciliation, which avoids the two easy paths of toleration and isolation.
–Robert Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, p.217-219